Can a company decide to pay short term payroll in full under maternity but only 80% under any other short term issue? Is that legal in the state of Illinois?

Yes, at this time an Illinois company can decide to pay full salary to women on childbirth disability but only 80% to employees on short term disability for other reasons. Doing the reverse would be illegal — the federal PDA or Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires that an employer offer benefits that are at least as good to women on childbirth disability, as to employees on medical disability for other reasons such as heart attack, stroke, etc. However, at this time there is no law that would prevent the employer from offering better benefits to women after the birth of a baby.

We would not advise this measure. At some point it is likely to result in a sex discrimination lawsuit, since men do not give birth. However, at this point such a policy would be legal in Illinois and most other states.

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 12:44 pm and is filed under Benefits.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.